Garlic ameliorates hyperlipidemia in chronic aminonucleoside nephrosis

Nephrotic syndrome (NS) is characterized by proteinuria, oxidative stress a nd endogenous hyperlipidemia. Hyperlipidemia and oxidative stress may be in volved in coronary heart disease and the progression of renal damage in the se patients. Garlic has been suggested to be beneficial in various disease states. Some of the beneficial effects of garlic may be secondary to its hy polipidemic and antioxidant properties. Therefore, the effect of a 2% garli c diet on acute and chronic experimental NS induced by puromycin aminonucle oside (PAN) was studied in this work. Acute NS was induced by a single inje ction of PAN to rats which were sacrificed 10 days later. Chronic NS was in duced by repeated injections of PAN to rats which were sacrificed 84 days a fter the first injection. Garlic treatment was unable to modify proteinuria in either acute or chronic NS, and hypercholesterolemia and hypertriglycer idemia in acute NS. However, garlic treatment diminished significantly tota l-cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and triglycerides, but not HDL-cholesterol i n chronic NS. Garlic induced no change in the percentage of sclerotic glome ruli in chronic NS and a significative decrease on the percentage of sclero tic area of these glomeruli (33 +/- 3% in NS+Garlic group vs. 47 +/- 4% in NS group, p = 0.0126). The enhanced in vivo renal H2O2 production and the d iminished renal Cu, Zn-SOD and catalase activities in acute NS, and the dec reased renal catalase activity in chronic NS were not prevented by garlic t reatment. These data indicate that garlic treatment ameliorates hyperlipide mia and renal damage in chronic NS which is unrelated to proteinuria or ant ioxidant enzymes.